To meet the university’s needs for increased Internet bandwidth, UCIT will perform an upgrade to the Cincinnati Education Research Fiber-loop (CERF) ring during Labor Day weekend. The CERF ring is the backbone providing Internet and Internet2 connectivity for UC, Xavier, and Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. The upgrade will begin at 6:00 p.m., Friday, September 2 and is expected to be complete by 1:00 a.m. Sunday, September 4. Users should expect intermittent service interruption to the Internet during this window, however there is a possibility for intermittent Internet outages during the entire maintenance period.

The maintenance will begin at one node and move around the ring until complete. The expected window of maintenance for the main campus UC node is anticipated to go from 10:00 p.m., Friday, September 2 until 2:00 a.m. Saturday, September 3.

The university’s private network that links to Veterans, Children’s and UC Health hospitals will also be unavailable during the maintenance window for the main campus UC node. Separately, the estimated timing for the UC Reading node (formerly Genome Research Institute) is from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., Saturday, September 3. During the maintenance window every effort will be taken to minimize service interruptions and impact to end-users. 

After this upgrade is complete, we will have more flexibility to increase the amount of bandwidth we purchase in the future. Increasing our bandwidth will reduce slowness in our Internet connection during peak hours, and will provide better performance for those wishing to use high demand multi-media  tools (such as Blackboard and video streaming).